B. Hussein, Religion, Notre Dame 

B. Hussein, Religion, Notre Dame 

I was flipping the channels this afternoon, hoping my two year old would finally get sleepy enough for a nap and I chanced upon the last 20 minutes of B. Hussein's commencement address to the University of Notre Dame's class of 2009.

I am a big fan of Notre Dame commencements, I attended all of them between 1982 and 1985.  There has been a quasi tradition of sorts, Bush the First was an exception to that tradition, that newly elected presidents speak at Notre Dame the year that they are elected.  I haven't kept track of the years since then, but that's why I initially wasn't much bothered that B. Hussein was asked to speak at the 2009 commencements.

As the controversy advanced, I had to change my mind.  The University seems to have completely mishandled the entire issue.  Rather than simply say that he is the President, and we're honored that a man in that position will speak, they tried very clumsily to soften his controversial votes in favor of killing children that survive botched abortion procedures by balancing his attendance with that of their very pro-Catholic Laertare Medal nominee.

I don't blame Mary Glendon for refusing to be made a part of the spectacle.  I especially like her comment that commencement addresses fundamentally should be for the graduates, not to be a vehicle for complex and very disputed public controversy.

I don't know or much care who was the second fiddle to accept the Laetare Medal.  How must they feel to know that they are the first person to receive the honor after the intended recipient refused?*

Now to B. Hussein's address.  I didn't hear the whole thing, but I didn't hear him talk much about his communist ideology, beyond simple phrases imploring collectivism.  I didn't hear how he was acting to nationalize businesses and demonize private enterprise.

What I heard was frequent mentions of the virtue of religion and professions of religious belief.  I think there is nothing wrong with the president making such statements, but let's put this in some perspective.  If Bush the Second or any Republican president had given a speech with such frequent entreaties to an almighty, he would have been pilloried by the press for mixing church and state.  The silence from the usual critics is more evidence that the press is not only biased, but is actively promoting B. Hussein's marxist agenda.

The hypocracy is getting more than tiring.  It's gotten dangerous.  Bush was mocked for smirking, but I see little criticism of B. Hussein's obvious smirking and haughty demeanor.  He's The Won and need not be bothered.

I think Notre Dame should be ashamed for letting a man who not only promotes abortion, but encourages killing already born babies.  Notre Dame has lost a lot of its moral authority and credibility.  

*A quick bit of research shows that the University decided not to insult someone with a left over Laetare Medal and merely asked a former honoree to give an address.

Saturday - July 28, 2007

The Bible as a Tool for Those Unable to Know Right and Wrong

The Bible as a Tool for Those Unable to Know Right and Wrong

I met an interesting man the past two weeks. An army ranger, a captain formerly, now a navy chaplain. He's a believer in the Bible as a document that is to be taken literally to an extreme level. He believes that evil angels exist that are induced to copulate with women if they don't cover their hair. It seems bad angels have some fetish for hair, I guess. Oh, and evil angels can be recognized by their three pairs of wings. He's only met one so far in his life, when he worked as a prison guard. He knew him because the prisoner's eyes glowed red. Despite this, I really like him and think he is an otherwise good man, full of good, practical advice for my Marines.

Before he became a chaplain and a minister, before he became a missionary, before he became a handyman, before he became a prison guard, but after he left the army he applied for a job with the state department.

He didn't get the job, and the reason fascinates me.

He didn't get the job because of a revelation he had during the interview. He realized that one of his job requirements would be to convince people from other countries to supply information to him. He would get them to be traitors to their country. This horrified him because he realized that had he done that to his country, he would consider it among the worst crimes possible to commit as a citizen. The guilt for such a crime would drive him to suicide. He did not want to put that burden on other people.

After lengthy discussion, finally it was clear to me that this good man was unable to distinguish between nations, judging one as good and another as bad. His personal philosophy is incapable of judging whether something is good or bad. He was incapable of seeing that supporting a despotic regime was morally wrong and he believed the old, tired canard that one's culture determines what is right or wrong.

For example, he believed that individualism is valued only in our culture, and is in fact what is leading us to our downfall. Other cultures -- strangely he doesn't see how they are the despotic ones -- value family and tribal relations that are more important. The individual should be subordinate to the group. I suspect he comes to this conclusion honestly, he gets it from his only source of thought.

Although very intelligent, this man is incapable of thinking in abstract philosophical terms. He knows there is right and wrong, but is incapable of perceiving right and wrong. Being thus incapable, and yet wanting there to be an answer to the question as to what is right and wrong, he turns to a single source: The Bible.

He is a moral absolutist, which is good, but without the ability to percieve morality he is dependent on this book. This explains why he is a literalist in interpreting the Bible. If the Bible tells him absolutely what is right and what is wrong, then everything else it says must be absolutely true as well. Thus we must have six-winged bad angels that are seduced by women not covering their hair (I still am skeptical that this is in the Bible.)

Right and wrong are absolutes, and it is the role of civilization to come to an agreement to understanding what is right and what is wrong. No civilization has ever, and likely never will get 100% agreement nor even will any individual likely ever get a fully correct understanding of all that is right and all that is wrong. We can, however, certainly judge how well we are doing in a relative manner. We can know that the United States is among the best even with its known flaws. We can know that Cuba, China, Korea, and any muslim nation are among the worst. These are facts, they are self-evident and all people on this Earth are responsible to know this.

Convincing someone from one of these or other nations to subvert their government is not asking them to sin, it is allowing them to redeem themselves.

I enjoyed meeting this man for many reasons, but especially because he is such a dramatic example of why belief in god is often the catalyst for abetting or ignoring evil in others. There are many who believe in god who are not like this man, but this is a common mode. People like him believe in a god because they are personally incapable of deciding right and wrong without being told by others or being told by some ancient, dusty book of magic.

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Sunday - February 05, 2006

The Pope is all for the Religion of "Peace Through Beheadings"

The Pope is all for the Religion of "Peace Through Beheadings"

I read this morning that the Pope has spoken out against the political cartoons depicting Mohammed as a violent man. It makes one wonder why he would do this. Is it because he thinks it isn't polite to point out the elephant in the room? Is it because he doesn't want anyone in turn to point out the recent past of his own church, supporting murderers taking over Spain and Germany in the last century (especially with his ties to Hitler)? Is it because he is against freedom of speech? No, it's for much more sinister reasons.

The United States has made a huge error, one it can still correct, by not recognizing that the War on Terror is actually a relgious war. Our enemies may have temporary secular allies such as Iraqi former regime elements, but as we have seen, this alliance of convenience is very fragile, with frequent large scale battles between our enemy factions in Iraq. Many times while I was in Iraq, our troops witnessed battles, complete with mortar attacks and roadblocks between these factions. Our long term enemies, may use these former regimists, but the former regimists have their own agenda that often gets in their way. These Islamic fanatics are so intent on instituting Sharia law and their special brand of Islam that they don't even recognize the common sense of not fighting with their allies.

I can understand, even though I don't agree with, the decision by the US to not recognize the religious nature of the war. In the short term it may help mollify some of the enemy and deter them from being more actively murderous. We have enough on our plate with the first two muslim nations we've overthrown. The others will have to wait a bit longer. There is no need to get them riled up before we destroy their theocracies in turn.

What I don't understand is the Vatican. They have no army. They have no power projection they're trying to economize. In theory, the leader of all Catholics should have nothing but morality as his goal. Yet, what has been the consistent stance of that monster John Paul and now his successor, the Hitler youth? They have spoken up for the murderers. They have defended the claim of blood thirsty beheaders that no one should mock their religion.

So why would they do such a thing?

It's because, deep down, fundamentally, they think that a religion should have a protected status to control its followers as much as it can. The Pope may not agree with the details of Islam, such as the Koran, the sanctity of Mohammed and the claimed pedigree from Abrahams's other son, Ismail. And the Pope eats pork. But otherwise, the Pope has never relinquished the claim of power to control the lives and minds of its followers. Fundamentally, the Popes have defended the most outrageous claims of Islam because they want to reserve the right to make similar claims themselves.

The Catholic church is in decline in most of western civilization, probably at its lowest since the New World was discovered. The United States has to import priests from south and central America. European post modern progressivism is driving most of Germany and France towards secularism. Recently its defense of pederasty has been driving people away. This is a matter for concern, but the church doesn't want to reform itself, it wants to regain its former blind following.

The church has a continuing history of supporting totalitarianism against freedom. In almost every war worth noting, the papists have supported the immoral side. In Spain they supported the fascists against the legitimate government because the fascists supported state sponsored religions and the republicans wanted a version of separation of church and state. In WWII, they were somewhat neutral when there was never a clearer time to come out against an evil regime. In poor and oppressed nations, to this day, they support the oppressors so long as the oppressors give lip service, and money, to the church.

Now again, when there is a moral stand to take, the Pope doesn't condemn Islam and its bloody thirst for hacking off innocent heads. He defends it against legitimate ideological ridicule. I guess in his mind the world can only benefit from Islam reconstituted as a power. Perhaps he believes the world will divide again into Christendom and the Sultanate. The way things are going, that would be a step up for the church.

The president of the United States said that anyone not with us in this war on Terror is against us. The Pope, by supporting the suppression of free speech and supporting the murderers of Islam has once again shown that he is not with us.

We can only be thankful that American Catholics have traditionally been disinclined to follow the Pope's leadership. They may say nice things about him, but in the end, American Catholics ignore the funny foreigner in the pointy hat -- as we all should.

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Friday - May 28, 2004

The Pope Says We're Winning!!

The Pope Says We're Winning!!

Updated 6/4/04

I announce with great pride that now even that despicable, mystical, loony man that many people call the Pope has acknowledged that American culture is attaining perfection. He says that we are "turning against spirituality in favor of materialistic desires, giving way to a 'soulless vision of life.'" I couldn't be happier!



Oh wait. For some reason he calls this a bad thing. This is only more proof that the "Holy See" is a home of depravity and evil.

Here we are in the United States, the most prosperous nation ever to exist in the history of the world. Our people are happier, safer, richer, healthier, with more potential than those living in any other place in the world now or ever in history. The citizens of our nation are routinely among the smartest, the best athletes, the best of everything ever to be found in this world. Not only that, but we export freedom to other parts of the world and we give money, food, and medicine to needy countries. Our medical, scientific, and engineering discoveries save countless lives everywhere in the world.

How can anyone who wishes good for mankind say that our nation is the center of anything bad?

The truth is that organized, dictatorial religions like those under the boot of the Roman See are being displaced by something much better. Man is learning freedom is more powerful in promoting long, happy lives than are death centered religions. The Roman church and most of Christianity are obsessed with dying. To them, nothing we do here matters except how it affects our status after we're dead. While Americans are celebrating life every day, Saint Peter's successor is only thinking of us being dead.

The Roman Catholic church still has a very strong influence of its hey days during the Black Death when one third of its parishoners were killed. It still teaches that women are sexual animals to be shunned by pious men. The Pope leads a religion that only very recently advocated killing the democratically elected government of Spain and its supporters. The current Pope leads a religion that encourages poverty and subservience to despotic Central American regimes. Nice guy.

The man called the Pope is also the looney toon that believes fervently in his own magical powers to drive out demons from people who are "possessed." Most of us laugh at televangelists, but they're no different than this guy in the pointy hat. In fact long before he completely lost his mind from senility, he updated the rite of exorcism. You know, there are a lot of ghosts and goblins out there that need to be chased that are much more important than speaking out against tyrannical regimes. Oooh, look out! There's a ghost behind you! Better find the Pope!

This lump of deathly depravity has repeatedly denounced the United States for bringing freedom to those living under the horror in Iraq. He has joined hands with Muslims and "prayed" with those who would kill Americans because he agrees with them that happiness, prosperity and freedom from oppressive religious control are things to be feared.

The Roman Catholic church destroyed the prosperity of the Roman Empire and brought the dark ages to Europe, a time of mindlessness and absolute social and political control of an entire continent, not unlike what the Taliban wanted in Afghanistan. The dark age ended only after the monopolistic control of Christianity in Europe was broken by the Protestants.

Now there are more Americans who profess a belief in god and worship regularly than in any other nation on earth. It seems that freedom promotes that too. Oh, but wait. These pious Americans don't worship the same way the tyrant in Rome dictates, therefore we must be bad. Maybe if he and his lieutenants weren't playing with the private parts of little boys, they might notice more of their own irrelevence.

If this despicable man thinks that Americans have too much individuality, too much freedom, too much money, and too much happiness, then I say, it's a damn good thing he's over there and we're not under his boot. Let's celebrate our good fortune.

Update 6/4/04: Today the Pope took the occasion of President Bush's visit to him to insult him for the prison abuses that took place in Iraq. I'm among those who are most offended by what happened, but President Bush never condoned what happened there, and indeed has promised that punishment will be meted out.

But the Pope, who thinks that pedophiles, so long as they swear obedience to him, should be protected from the reach of the law and rewarded with cushy jobs, insults a man who comes across the world to pay his respects. I hope that the Pope is never again welcomed at the White House. What nerve!

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Wednesday - March 10, 2004

The Passion of the Christ

The Passion of the Christ

I haven't seen the movie yet, but I expect I will eventually. Just like everybody else.

I'm amazed that this movie has been controversial, and I'm also amazed that anyone predicted it would be a flop. These prognosticators are just plain stupid. There's no polite way of saying it. Religious films have always done well when they are done in grand style, like The Ten Commandments and a few others. Passion plays have been poplular for millenia, and when Gibson announced that he was going to make a new passion play and make it as realistic as modern technology would allow, it was a no brainer that it would succeed. Anyone who predicted otherwise was a fool.

I read an opinion article by someone I've never heard of but who seems knowlegeable, named Martin Grove. Here's what he had to say:

This was not what anyone anticipated, especially not the distributors who turned Gibson down when he was trying to put a domestic deal together for the film. While no one is saying precisely who those distributors were, they clearly know who they are and they're likely to be kicking themselves for a long time to come. It's hard to fault them, of course, because nothing about this film should have convinced them to do anything but try to distance themselves from the controversy it was generating from the get-go.

It's a pretty basic fact of marketing that controversy adds to awareness. So the building controversy was great for this movie, and despite the idiotic protestations of a few whacked out Jewish political hacks who thought it would cause us all to go out and slaughter Jews in a new American pogrom, everyone should have known that this is a story that is well known, and well loved. And revered. The Bible has been the most read book since the printing press was invented if not earlier, and the New Testament the most read part of the Bible. Of the New Testament, the Gospels are most popular.

So tell me, why did anyone think that anyone would be learning something they didn't already know about the Passion? Sure, the realism of seeing this movie gives a more personal impact, but the details are the same.

Good for Mel Gibson. His marketing of this movie was brilliant, even if it wasn't his intended method. He responded just right to the anti-semitic charges being levied against him and the hype has made him rich.

This is another nail in the coffin of Hollywood. It has been bleeding for about a decade now. Here in Austin, they say that more movies are filmed in Austin now than in Hollywood. I don't know if that's true, but it is true that Canada, Austin, New Zealand and many other places are taking the kooky Californians out of the loop.

And if the kooky Californians don't know that Bible stories are popular, they're going to keep losing out on big money makers like this one. Let's hope these nuts don't get a second chance at it. I'm no fan of the Bible or of Bible stories, but I know enough to know that there is a huge market for them in this country and around the world where there are Christians.

This movie has tapped into a very big part of our culture that consists of people who believe in god, and because of their strong beliefs tend to stay out of movie theaters. Mel Gibson has tapped into a largely unexploited part of the market. Your Aunt Minerva might never have gone to see a movie in the past ten or twenty years, but I'll bet she finds a way to see this one.

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Thursday - December 25, 2003

No, Virginia, There is No Santa Claus

No, Virginia, There is No Santa Claus

My niece and nephew (4 and 6) don't believe in Santa Claus because their parents have decided that deceiving children has no value.

I can't speak for my brother and his bride, but here are the reasons I think their Santa Claus policy is wise. Or is it?

I remember as a child, as most children do, that I always wondered how the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus could be everywhere in one day. Even at a very young age and not really understanding how big the Earth is, I knew that it was impossible for a human to go to everyone's house in a few hours. But I was taught that he was real by my parents and everyone else I knew so he had to be real.

I had some difficulty understanding how Santa fit in with all the things I had learned about Jesus and god, so my mind struggled like everyone else's did to discover how he could be real and I concluded that magic was involved.

During the time when a child is conceptualizing the world, that is when he is transforming his percepts into concepts, our culture teaches him to ignore obvious and verifiable evidence and instead believe blindly in what cannot be true. Children don't know how Santa can be possible, but they are taught that he is real despite the evidence. Being young and not having fully developed minds or even narrow life experiences, they believe what they are taught by those whom they trust.

So my only question I would like to pose now is, once a child learns that Santa isn't real, does he then conclude that all is right with the world and the conflict of a Christian god and Santa Claus is resolved, strengthening his belief in magic? Or does he learn to unlearn what he has learned and reject magical gods as being another story he was told?

No matter. They will believe what they believe because of their own minds and neither I had I wanted to nor even their parents will decide for them. Hopefully the conclusion they reach will be the best one.

In the meantime, if anyone out there is reading this drivel, I wish you a merry Christmas, the second greatest American holiday we have, after Independence Day. It the most sacred celebration of our prosperity that we have. Three cheers for materialism, consumerism, and sharing our wealth with our loved ones. These are the best things in life.

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Saturday - November 16, 2002

Christianity and Child Sacrifice

Christianity and Child Sacrifice

One of the most baffling parts of Christianity, beyond the entire concept of a deity, is why do Christians think it's a good thing that their deity had to be tortured and killed so brutally? Sure, once he's a martyr for his ideas then he can be admired and respected -- if they agree with his ideas -- but if their god is so powerful, why was it necessary? Theologians have come up with all sorts of reasons, none of which make much sense to me, so I won't even bother repeating them. What is eerie about this sacrifice is the parallel to other sacrifices common in the ancient world.

Of course, this was the intended parallel, and Christ is often compared to a sacrificial lamb, but I submit that there is an even stronger parallel to the legacy of human sacrifice in many Semitic religions.

We don't know a lot of the details of Phoenecian religions, but it is believed that their religions have the common thread of human sacrifice, specifically of children. One tradition of Judaism is in fact an implicit rejection of this child sacrifice and is related in the story of Abraham and Isaac. The story goes like this: God told Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, which he prepared to do, but at the last minute god stopped the murder and explained that Abraham was simply being tested to see to what lengths he would obey the deity. Abraham is then told that child sacrifice is no longer permitted.

Of course, no one bothers to ask why Isaac ever trusted his father again!

But here it is in the bible that god tells his people that sacrificing children is no longer to be tolerated. I suspect this is the main reason for the creation of Judaism: Some of the Semitic people finally got fed up with the logic of sacrificing their children, so they invented this story and this version of god to avoid the requirement.

Of course, we can look even more fundamentally at the issue and ask why is any type of animal or human sacrifice thought of as some way of appeasing or gaining favor from a deity? There were many, in fact most, religions in the known world of the Mediterranean, Anatolia, the Levant, the Tigris and Euphrates River Valleys, the Nile Delta, etc. that did not allow human sacrifice, yet took it for granted that killing other animals was required for some sort of divine blessing, or as implied in the Bible a test of obedience. It is so ingrained in their and our culture that no one ever really explains why that is so.

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Sunday - April 21, 2002

Why You Shouldn't be a Catholic. (or any kind of Christian)

Why You Shouldn't be a Catholic. (or any kind of Christian)

The recent spate of priests being accused of being perverts and pedophiles is hardly surprising to anyone who has spent time among men pursuing the priesthood. (I matriculated at a Catholic university, and my brother is a priest.) There are without doubt some very nice guys who desire to be priests, but the requirement of celibacy discourages most men with healthy urges (and even minds) from living such an unnatural life. The priesthood was more popular in poorer nations like in Ireland during the Potato Famine, or in Spain before their Civil War, and in most of Europe when poverty was common. In most of these countries the priesthood was a good way to get an education and to make sure you had food to eat. Celibacy was often winked at or ignored as a requirement. In the fifteenth century one of the best selling books was written by a Spanish priest entitled "The Book of Good Love," filled with lurid details how to seduce every type of woman. It was obviously written from personal experience. That priest was eventually jailed, but the propensity for priests to have "maids" or "cousins" living with them was still very common. Shortly before the Spanish Inquisition there was an attempt to enforce the celibacy requirement, but this was scoffed at by most. Even Popes have been known to have children and mistresses. It appears to me that this past century has been one of the rarer times where priests are expected to observe this vow.

Today in the United States, celibacy is expected to be observed with the result that normal men, and I use the term "normal" very purposefully, generally will not consider being a priest. There are exceptions: Some men really are quite devout and such staunch believers that they consider it a worthwhile sacrifce, but for the most part men with unhealthy or unnatural minds become priests. Celibacy doesn't make them perverts, they were the type to be perverts before they became priests. The church tries to weed these out, but their desparate shortage of priests (US churches now recruit heavily from third world countries where men join the clergy to escape poverty) clearly has made them reduce standards.

Of course the real tragedy (beyond the plight of the victims) isn't that the church is suffering from a bad reputation, the real tragedy is that the church heirarchy protected these perverts from receiving the punishments they richly deserve. According to Roman Catholic doctrine, any priest has the ability to forgive any sin, but it appears that they have forgotten the other side of that doctrine: They have the authority to hold the sinners bound to their guilt. They can also make forgiveness dependent on submitting to "worldly" justice.

In fact, the concept of separation of church and state is much older than our nation, it is strongly implied in the New Testament itself when Jesus advised his followers to give to Caesar that which is Caesar's, and to give to god that which belongs to god. According to Jesus, the "soul" (whatever that is) belongs to god, while the body belongs to this world, symbolized by Caesar.

In our nation of laws, we tolerate (and often encourage) people to believe in magic and we respect peoples' rights to believe in every kind of faeries or demons or gods that they desire. This freedom of minds is extremely important. Freedom is only possible when it includes the freedom to be wrong. Thus we should embrace our freedom of religion, no matter how nonsensical religion is, but we should also be sure to keep this freedom of thought and expression within the bounds of otherwise moral behavior. For example, we can allow people to believe that pedophilia is a good thing and express that idea, but the line is drawn when people use religion to commit pedophilia, or protect those who do so even while objecting to the practice.

In short, the Catholic church may have forgiven these perverts, but we as a society haven't. They may forgive them all they like, and even call them saints and claim they will go to some idyllic paradise after they are dead, but we as a society have a responsibility to make sure that pedophiles are indeed dead. Whatever they want to believe about what happens after their peers are dead is their concern, and irrelevent to justice in the world that really exists.

Conceptually, there is little difference between a religion that is used to protect men that like to play with little boys' private parts, and a religion that encourages men to fly airplanes into skyscrapers. Both are examples of people using their belief in magic to permit crimes against their fellow man. The Catholic church officially doesn't approve of the men who have committed these crimes, but they appear to have condoned it for decades that we know of. We should not forget how the Catholic church encourages people to murder political opponents, even as recently as the 1930's in Spain. We should never allow them to protect perverts either. Both perverts and their protectors should be prosecuted vigorously and unmercifully within the fullest allowable penalties of the law.

All Americans should examine this event and reconsider how they can obey such a cabal of men, for the Catholic church demands not only belief, but obedience. Those who wish to live a life of morality would do better to depend on their own minds to discern right from wrong rather than depend on the likes of these to interpret it for them.

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Wednesday - December 05, 2001

Henotheism

Henotheism

A lot of people, mostly politicians and pundits, go on and on about how Islam is a peaceful religion. Either these people are completely ignorant, or they choose to ignore Islam's record. Militant Islam today is very consistent with most of its history in that it is very intolerant of other religions and has expanded almost entirely through military conquest. This is a legacy of its Judaic past in an indirect way. Christianity and Islam, the two modern forms of Judaism, have taken from their predecessor the belief that their god is the only god and that worship of any other god is incorrect and evil. This was a belief almost unique to Judaism in ancient days. Almost every other religion or cult besides the Jews were henotheistic; that is, they believed that the existence of other gods besides their own was not inconsistent with their own gods' existence. For instance, in early Hellenistic Greece they mostly still believed in Athena and Demeter et al., but these were only a part of the concept of "god" which transcended individual deities who were but messengers of "god." The Greeks, as did almost every other religion, believed that there was one universal "god concept" which was represented by individual deities, thus all gods were legitimate to a certain extent. The Jews in contrast believed that all other gods besides their own did not exist and it was sinful to worship any others. This was the profound change brought about by Judaism.

So where am I going with this? I can write all day about the history of religions or the fundamental evil of believing in a deity, or even the fundamental inconsistency of theism and morality, but here I want to concentrate on how Judaism and its modern versions in the form of Christianity and Islam have changed the world in fundamental ways, and not for the better.

There have been religions among people for as long as we can tell, and these have taken many forms. There have been cults of Isis and the Mother of the Mountain and other female deities, all with very similar origins. There have been Cybele worshippers that for centuries believed that castrating oneself with a rock in a formal ceremony was the way to be indoctrinated into the highest level of their religious order. The Greeks had the Eleusinian Mysteries (and mysteries they remain, their secrets having been taken to the grave of the last of the initiated, surely a sign of devoutness) among many other beliefs. All of these religions had people as devout as any modern Franciscan, Mufti or Rabbi with as profound a belief structure as any today. A remarkable characteristic of all these religions was that they acknowledged the equal legitimacy of other gods. Almost every major ancient religion was henotheistic except Judaism.

The Jews were the first major religion to declare that their god was the only god. At first they only claimed that their god was the most powerful god, but that quickly changed after the very earliest period of their long history. This intolerance of others' beliefs caused the Jews to be isolated for most of their history, but it also encouraged a homogeneity that made them strong. It wasn't until the Romans conquered them that they began to splinter into sects (there were other sects, i.e., the Samaritans before the Romans but these were less political in their schism) that had various levels of tolerance for other beliefs. The Zealots, Sicarrii, and the Essenes among other sects could not accept the tolerance the Romans had for their culture and beliefs and insisted on rebelling, with a fanaticism and totalitarian control over their people not unlike the Taliban today. These sects were destroyed by the Romans, almost to the last man, but the idea of changing Judaism to another form caught on and Christianity was born as a pacifist version of these rebellious sects. Being non-violent, they were allowed to survive.

The primary difference between Judaism and Christianity, beyond the superficial detail of the messiah figure, is that unlike Judaism, Christianity was evangelical. That is, they recruited from non-Jews to join their cult. Judaism almost never, even to this day, tries to expand to non-Jews because their belief in being the "chosen" people implies that others aren't naturally disposed to be Jewish. That is, they won't turn away converts, but it doesn't normally occur to them that non-chosen people, gentiles, would wish to join them, and they make it more difficult to convert with their requirement to mutilate male genitalia.

The appeal of Christianity was to combine the certainty of there only being one god, with the inclusiveness of not having the idea of genetic purity which was the hallmark of Judaism. Christianity spread through this type of appeal, and then became dominant in the Roman Empire through exerting political power, mostly without violence. Usually starting with recruitment of individuals, Christianity would eventually convert existing nations wholesale, but early Christians were not content with mere official status, they had to eliminate all other beliefs. Using propaganda and political influence they destroyed non-christian temples, and as their popularity increased they chased down worshippers of pagan beliefs and forcibly converted them. Early and medieval Christian writings about other beliefs have an air of paranoia generally, these beliefs were considered evil. In fact, much of our current ignorance of other cults besides Christianity is due to their systematic destruction of competitor religious writings and places of worship, not too unlike how the Taliban destroyed the Buddha statue recently in Afghanistan.

Islam came from a similar beginning, the desire to be more inclusive. In fact the founder of Islam was an Arab and not a Jew. To distinguish themselves from the genetic purity of Jews, they claimed to be followers of Abraham's first son, Ishmael who was born to Abraham's Egyptian slave girl, rather than Isaac who was Abraham's son through his wife, Sarah. Islam's strength was again the appeal of monotheism, the certainty that there is only one god, combined with the inclusiveness similar to the Christians, and topped off with complete and total control of every aspect of life even more so than Judaism, perverting life from "living" to an existence that is a sort of halfway house for death (or eternal life as they would claim). This total control of life was an incredibly powerful social tool, as we have seen over the millenia; a similar control was used to enact the Russian Revolution in 1917, and many other totalitarian regimes. The remarkable thing is that Islam has had periods and places where they had some tolerance for non-believers, and even then this tolerance was based on the belief that these non-believers were generally not worth associating with; religious and social tolerance was almost never granted to their own people. For instance, in medieval Spain, the Muslims allowed Christians and Jews to continue worshipping and living as they wished, so long as they stayed within areas set by the Muslims, there was to be little or no intermingling of cultures officially (reality was a little different, of course).

This period of tolerance in Islam was the height of Arab history but unfortunately, as it seems to always happen, religious intolerance brought about the fall of the Caliphate of Cordoba to the Almoravids and then the Almohads around the eleventh and twelfth centuries. These fundamentalist sects, especially the Almohads, destroyed the beautiful culture of the Taifas of Iberia, whose art, science and poetry were justly famous, and re-instituted fundamentalist Islamic culture -- backwards, and less literate. The extent and form of this decay is a topic for another day but it is sufficient to say that fundamentalism is not new today, and has been ever present in the world of Islam with varying degrees of prominence.

So back to the topic at hand. Judaism, with its monotheism and intolerance of observing and acknowledging other gods spawned Christianity and Islam which shared that trait of not recognizing other gods (with some debate as to whether Christians were really monotheistic what with hundreds of saints, the Virgin, the Trinity, etc.). Jews revolted from Rome and ceased to exist as a nation and took on a very tolerant (or acquiescent) patina. Christians adapted and adopted various pagan rituals and observances and turned them into new Christian rituals and thus spread their political power while at the same time keeping secular and religious lives separate to a degree. Muslims spread through the sword and made (and make) no distinction between secular and religious authority.

Since the Romans destroyed Judea, the Jews have accepted other religions in their host nations wherever they happen to reside. Since the turmoil of the Reformation, Christianity has generally kept that which is Caesar's for Caesar, and that which is god's for god and kept religion and politics less stringently tied together. But Islam still believes and still has as a major fatwa (a ruling of recognized scholars) that a Muslim cannot be a Muslim properly and live in a non-Muslim state. For true Islam, not only is there no distinction between religion and state, to want a distinction is heresy. This intolerance of other religions which is common to Judaism and Christianity, is more severe in Islam in its fundamentalist forms, creating a danger for the rest of the world from their seemingly insane insistence on declaring "Jihad" on people half a world away who know little to nothing about them.

I don't pretend that the world will be without war and violence with a return of henotheism to our various cultures, nor do I pretend that a renewed henotheism could happen within the next few centuries. I do know, however, that the religious intolerance, the fundamentalist tendency for Jihad, the co-mingling of religious and secular power is something that Islam has proven all too often is dangerous among them. I believe firmly that people have the right to worship as they wish, but when their beliefs require coercive enforcement and participation in a medieval culture, then that religion has ceased to be protected. It is a fundamental requirement that we transform Afghanistan, Iran, and other nations from the backwards, oppressive theocracies that they are into modern, prosperous capitalist nations. The people of those nations have a right to be free, and no one has the right to force religion onto them. More importantly to us immediately is that until we transform these cultures like we transformed Germany and Japan, they will be extremely dangerous to us. It is my sincere hope that this is what President Bush means when he says that this will be a long war.

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